Executing and developing the most effective marketing campaign requires a combination of forethought, research and analysis. There are a number of marketing optimization methods and technologies that can help you succeed. Sirius Decisions recently highlighted 8 keys to a successful marketing campaign. We made an infographic highlighting the eight most important strategies for successful marketing campaigns and took a deep dive into them below.
Segmentation Analysis
Segmentation and targeting must go beyond separation to focus on your biggest opportunity. To define these markets, segmentation must be meaningfully defined by demographic and geographic factors as well as buyer history and brand relationship. Customers and subscribers are divided into distinct groups that can then be targeted consistently, and messaging can be targeted to certain buying habits or relevant geographic activities (let’s not sell sweaters in Florida in May, ok?).
Audience Selection
Once segments are created, consider who you want to speak to. Segmenting the audience allows you to send targeted campaigns to a very specific audience (to registry owners in the Northeast, to people who haven’t purchased yet this quarter in Seattle). Make a conscious decision about whom you want to speak to, and where the best opportunity may be to grow customers
Persona Definition
Having a deep knowledge of buyer personas will be helpful in the creation of a campaign theme. You’ve created segments for your audience – but now you need to consider their motivations and needs. Qualitative research should focus on these needs and motivations. The results will offer you profound buyer insights, and should be the blueprint for your messaging.
Buying Decision Process
How do your buyers shop? Do they do most of their research on mobile and then purchase in-store? Do they visit your site several times, often leaving things in the shopping cart, before returning and ultimately purchasing? You need to understand how your buyers shop – and then fit your campaign into that process.
Campaign Architecture
Program families, demand creation, sales enablement, and reputation, have to be linked to the buying process. Successful campaign architecture needs to be aligned with how your customers buy and messages should be timed to follow your buyers through that journey. Successful campaign architecture design takes operational considerations into account – can your website or inbound channel effectively handle incoming traffic? And finally, effective design is critical to projectable learning after the campaign – are the test cells significant statistically to yield learnings? Can the contribution of specific variables (offer, message, format) be isolated? A campaign itself may not be successful but may yield valuable learnings for the next time.
Messaging Components
The messaging and value propositions have to be audience-centric but it isn’t enough to just focus on the customer. Prior to coming up with narrative elements, marketers must understand the needs of buyers at every stage of the buying cycle and to provide content for each of those stages.
Content Mapping
Content mapping builds on the work of segmentation, buyer-process and persona definition, and messaging. Specific content assets need to be assigned to each stage of the buyer’s journey, helping to move the buyer to the next stage. For B2B marketers, this can include things like how-to videos, tip sheets, e-books, whitepapers, and webinars. For B2C marketers, social media, viral marketing, ambient advertising, and other brand awareness activities can play a similar role.
Campaign Dashboard
Measuring a campaign is more than just attributing sales and justifying marketing spend. The best campaign dashboards provide actionable intelligence about the successes and areas for improvement within the campaign. More importantly, these tools provide marketers with an opportunity to substantially improve the performance of their campaigns after every execution.